how 2 sell zines online, by krad

[kradeelav]

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Introduction

this is not a guide on “how to make a handmade zine”, as there’s plenty of fantastic (free!) tutorials on it - such as this, this and this. This is also not a guide of choosing a specific printer for indie creative work or work meant for the convention circuit, as that would likely go out of date quickly. What this is:

• documentation on how I personally print & sell zines on a small scale painlessly, within the US.
• documentation with specific tips for kink, controversial, & NSFW artists who face additional and unique payment barriers versus “vanilla” creatives. for example, my specific process does not show my real name to the customer, further blunting any impact a harassment campaign would make.
• useful tips on how to sell physical merch on itch.io since it’s not exactly advertised and requires some set-up.

This is not the only way, either, mind; but I’ve done this for a while and like sharing resources. You may repost on other sites (tumblr link tba), but I would encourage you to credit me & link back to the dreamwidth link. (thanks!)

Without further ado ...

Make a Zine

I know this feels like ‘draw a circle, then draw the rest of the f*king owl’, but I have faith in you. There’s some links above that talk to this.

A seamless pre-order process from start to finish can take 1-4 months, depending on the size/complexity of the project, whether you’ve done this before and have set up the backbone, and other factors. Pace yourself! Ultimately this isn’t about the money. I probably just about break even; to me, selling zines is simply a back-up in case if the world wide web goes to shit, and my art would have one last legacy in the physical world.

Prep, Pre-press, & Printing

Three months in advance of your project, I’d start cold-emailing a few printers, if you’re not wanting the hassle of printing off of your mom’s your printer, or your work/library printer. There’s advantages of printing it at home (cheaper, easier to do small quantity runs from 1-25), but when you start hitting 25-50+ zines per run, it may be worthwhile to offload that work.
The biggest reason to cold-email a commercial printer ahead of time is to ask for a paper sample. I’m not going to put the name of my commercial printer of choice here for safety reasons (if you know me on DW, my email, or discord handle, and/or are another kink art creator, you’re welcome to reach out privately for it). That said, any company worth their salt are going to be happy to send you a paper sample for a minor fee, if you inquire for it. Other topics I’d inquire about when cold-emailing printers is:

• if they print NSFW (if you need it). Be specific! Are you creating/printing naziexploitation? eroguro? lolisho? Some will only require that you put R18 on the cover. Some will decline. Some don’t care if it’s drawn, only no photography. It’s not personal. A good printer will ask to see an example spread of your content -- send them a screenshot if they ask. Most printers have a higher tolerance for R18 than you think, though I personally find that US based printers tend to be more flexible with creative work than Canadian or Asia printers. You save a buttload on shipping/border hassle if you’re also within the US. (Border police tend to be more picky about “obscene content” than domestic. I know a friend whose zines got seized at the border for perfectly legal work that was posted on Ao3, so it does happen in this day and age.)
• Asking for a quote for your imagined product is a good idea, even if the page count or size changes. at worst, you still get a sense of how much it’s going to be for a standard size, and can compare prices like apples to apples.
• Minimum/Maximum print runs, if the info is not on their store.
• Basic communication. There’s a lot of fantastic printers over in Asia that can run circles around the US/Canadian ones. Moderate english proficiency is not a yellow flag, as long as it doesn’t impact actual quality; but if it does, that can be a problem. Do they reply promptly (within 3 working days)? Are they generally helpful, or rude/ghost you? Is their website easy to navigate and provide resources?
• As mentioned, being sent paper samples is lovely so you know what you’re getting into with future projects. When you say ‘I want a cover with 80lb gloss’, you can touch and feel that in your home.
• If they do proofs. (ALWAYS ask for proofs). What to look for in proofs: streaky/puddly inks, mis-aligned colors, white borders if your book is full-bleed, pixelated images (maybe you accidentally sent them the low resolution file ... I’ve done this ....), pages that are in the wrong order. Typos! Regardless if it’s an error on your side or their side, this is the stage to correct it.

Contact around 2-5 companies, and pick your favorite regarding price, quality, and convenience.

Creating the Store

Two months out, I’d start looking at stores. There’s a lot of online storefronts out there, with an extensive list of pros/cons that could fill up a whole post. Below is a list of reasons why I ultimately chose itch.io for my specific use-case over the likes of etsy, gumroad, paypal’s online store, and others.

• fees (pro): itch.io has some of the most flexible and low-cost fees in the game re: online storefronts. i’m not going to get into it as their FAQ. is a better place for this, but it’s a considerable difference.
  
• convenience & aesthetics (pro): their creator + work pages give you a ton of customization, and it’s pretty easy to post your works on there.
• analytics & visibility (pro): most online stores will give you a similar level of analytics as well as being searchable on their internal platform. itch.io is more well known for indie games, and not zines per se, but there’s a rapidly growing selection of zine artists selling their stuff on there given these advantages, and the venn diagram of people buying indie games and zines are ... really similar.
  
• privacy (pro): itch.io has an unique system where they’ll ask you to go through a tax interview before you sell stuff, to verify you are who you are. While the tax prep requires more up-front work, in exchange, not having your real or dead name show up in transactions is huge from a privacy/safety standpoint, if you’re selling semi-controversial artwork.
• they’ll allow nsfw ... with caveats. I’ve had kink artist friends kicked off of etsy and gumroad multiple times purely due to the storefronts caving in from harassment campaigns. while I haven’t seen personal friends kicked off from itch.io, however, in the last year they have been starting to move away from an unofficial ‘any and all fictional nsfw welcome’ policy to a murkier one. It’s not what I’d call an immediate red flag, but it does give me serious concerns for the longevity of the platform. For 90% of creative sellers, you’re probably fine, but if you have online stalkers and are used to dealing with these niche issues of stores being yanked down ... yeah. (to that case, I’ve tentatively never heard of anyone being pulled off from ecwid? Haven’t used it but it’s my first backup choice.)

physical merch on itch.io specifically ...

As mentioned above, itch.io was built specifically for indie games; this whole feature of being able to sell physical merch is an extra. It’s a nice one though.
The tl;dr is you have to make “rewards” required, via their refinery toolset (basically an extra free plug-in). Just follow the instructions on that page, you’ll know you did it right when your project page looks like this:

(Go to Dashboard > $your_comic > (more) > rewards)

Make sure that required bit is checked. Below to the bottom-right, you’ll see a space to add an address form, which makes it easy to input addresses even internationally. I would highly encourage you to either test a purchase yourself, or have a friend test it, before going live for your first time.

Pre-Order Process

After you’ve selected your store, i would create 1-3 promotional pieces. These can be as simple as a literal screenshot of a cover or some internal artwork to go along with the basic description of your zines. Don’t write an essay, but cover the basics - how much is it? How would you describe it to the cashier at your grocery store? Is it NSFW or have specific content warnings? What would be its Ao3 tags? Here’s an example of one of mine:

Once when you’ve posted the description to your itch.io page and mocked up a social media post or two .... announce it!

... (good luck!) ...

While you’re waiting for orders to (hopefully) roll in, now’s the time I’d create an excel spreadsheet of your orders that lives on your desktop. Things to have on your spreadsheet:

• how many/which zines they ordered, if you have more than one type
• date the zine is ordered
• email (to contact when the zines are sent, and/or if they forgot to put their address)
• (real) name to put on the address
• the address
• special notes (are they a frequent customer that leaving a little thank-you note for might be worthwhile? special international instructions? did they require another zine sent if it got lost in the mail?)
• date that you personally, sent the zines out to (also useful to know if it gets lost)

The date when pre-orders close is when you need to put in the actual print order to your printer of choice. Expect 2-4 weeks turnaround time including proofs.

Generally I order (amount of pre orders)+5 or +10, because you may want to pass some to friends, keep one or two, or there might be a straggler or two who want to buy it after the fact. Don’t do +100 like i did my first time, you’ll be trying to get rid of those for years. :P

Mailing

While you’re waiting on stuff to get sent to you...

• the usps store is a pretty basic place to get stamps. :v ur gonna need a lot; and this will be probably your biggest expense other than the print order.
• envelopes.com was recommended to me ages ago for all kinds of envelope sizes. I started off sending most of my early zines with a 5x7in envelope that only needed one stamp domestically in the US; just recently brought a size up to be able to send slim (but larger) doujinshi/comics.

Privacy tip: I don’t put my return address on zines going out. The USPS doesn’t particularly like it, and they’re very clear that if it gets lost, it’s not going to be returned. but again, the privacy trade-off of that versus just losing one zine has been extremely worth it. (Out of hand-mailing 100+ zines I think I know of only one customer that I had to re-send a zine to).

Anyway, once when you get your box of printed zines, stamps, and envelopes, it’s time to hand-address them with your info from the spreadsheet. There’s no real skill to this part of the process as much as turning on your favorite music and being careful to address things correctly. I’ll often do these in batches of 10 to reduce errors.

The day before I mail out a batch of ten, I’ll send a short e-mail to the recipients. Generally in the email I’ll mention it’s being sent out, and if it hasn’t arrived within a month, reply back to me and I’ll re-send another. (This covers my ass in case if the system breaks down somewhere, and gives them a specific date to work off on.)

Then, the best part: mailing them out, and marking it as fulfilled in itch.io!

Recap

1. make the zine & get a printer on hand.
2. make the itch.io page with the details, where they can click 'buy'
3. make a pre-order post that said something like 'PRE ORDERS OPEN for x zine, closes on y date (within a month or so). printing and shipping will take 1-2 months.
4. (hopefully watch orders roll in).
5. count 'em up when the timeline closes, and send that order to the printer. (plus maybe 5 or so, since there's always a straggler or two).
6. have printed, and then once you get it, ship 'em out.

Conclusion

It’s a lot of work! I don’t blame you if this wall of text made you think twice about the process; it does require multiple day’s worth of work, and a sense of being organized. If you’re forgetful like me, having things written down is critical.
You will make mistakes the first go-around, but it’s not the end of the world as long as you stay professional emotionally, apologize if it’s your screw-up, and make note of how to avoid it in the future. (Hell, I just had an incident where I got cocky and thought I could skip the proof process. Guess what happened?)

All of this is also fantastic for your resume, by the by - all of the above? Is literally project management 101; milk it for what it’s worth if you need to. Best of luck!

* (if ur reaction was 'screw zines, how the FUCK did you make that baller gamefaqs-y header ... here you go :D )